Why Import Workers Now?

As related here in October, USA Today found that, invariably, when U.S. authorities raid a plant site where hundreds of illegals are working, and send them packing, hundreds of Americans show up and apply for the jobs. Is this not as it should be, if we are looking out for our own people first? And isn't that what a family does, or should do?

Why, then, is the Obama administration cutting back on jobsite raids and inspections? Why is the administration talking of moving in 2010 to legalize the status of the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the United States?

Is putting illegal aliens on the path to citizenship a higher priority for this Obama crowd than opening up jobs for American workers?

Are the K Street lobbyists whose corporate bosses cannot get enough low-wage labor that powerful? Are the Hispanic lobbies like La Raza and MALDEF, with their charges of "nativist" and "xenophobe," so intimidating the Democratic Party cannot stand up to them?

Two weeks ago, The Washington Post, focusing on unemployment among young African-American males, wrote, "Joblessness for 16- to 24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions -- 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population."

More than one-third of all young black males are unemployed.

Which raises a question. Where is the Black Caucus?

Here are folks who favor preferential treatment for their black constituents over white Americans -- i.e., affirmative action. But they go mute when it comes to immigrants coming and taking jobs and illegal aliens holding down 8 million of those jobs that could be going to the unemployed in their own community.

Nor is it only working-class Americans who are being shouldered aside by the annual flood tide of immigrants.

As Jerry Woodruff, editor of Middle American News, writes: "Immigrants are taking good, high-paying jobs from highly skilled Americans. The Census Bureau found that 34 percent of all software engineers ... are immigrants. Yet, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers reports that 48,000 U.S. software engineers are unemployed."

If Obama wants to take executive action to assist Americans out looking for work, he could take two strong and effective steps.

First, call on Congress to vote a moratorium on immigration until the unemployment rate falls below 6 percent. Second, instruct Homeland Security and the Justice Department to renew the raids and enforce the law against employers who are taking jobs from Americans by illegally hiring undocumented aliens.

If Obama did that, suddenly folks would sit up and say, as they did after Ronald Reagan busted the air controllers, "This man is serious."